Kautilya’s Arthashastra: Strategic Cultural Roots of India’s Contemporary Statecraft

Debates around the existence of a strategic culture in India have tickled the minds of scholars in International Relations for a long time, with a critical precedent set by George K. Tanham (1992), through Indian Strategic Thought: An Interpretive Essay, written for the RAND Corporation. Tanham refers to the incoherence in India’s strategic behaviour and concludes that strategic thought is by far absent in India. Kautilya’s Arthashastra: Strategic Cultural Roots of India’s Contemporary Statecraft by Kajari Kamal puts an end to all these debates. The book paints a detailed picture of the strong influence of Kautilya’s thought on the core values displayed in India’s contemporary strategic behaviour through individual and collective decision-making at the leadership level (p. xviii).